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It’s 3.45pm and I’m trying not to sleep. Yawn! Trying not to sleep should be easy. Trying not to get bored to death is harder. That’s right! I’m so bored by the seminar I can really feel my candle being extinguished. Time is indeed creeping in a petty pace in the Lecture Theatre. Thus, I’m writing this with my Macbeth text wide open, putting on a charade that I’m writing an essay (so hardworking eh?) so that the teacher doesn’t put twenty trenched gashes on my head.
Pardon me for this rambling post, but seriously, half of the Josephians have left on the pretext of some excuse, and the rest of the people here look like they were all too ready to give a standing ovation when the whole seminar ends. Alright, let’s give some credit to our guests for that industrious note-taking at the start, but from what I heard, the notes became some sort of primitive chat room.
So how much benefit did we manage to derive from this seminar? I won’t answer that, but I really hope they’ll read the feedback form properly.
… …
Speaking of school, I watched Hogwarts again just now. Yes, Harry Potter 5. It looks like the HP movie franchise is getting worse – the movies no longer feel like adaptations of the books. They look like a movie that had a script that was haphazardly put together by cutting out segments of the book.
I liked the dark scenes at the back though. Really awesome – the sense of foreboding can match that of a true horror movie. I also liked the part where Kingsley said, “You may not like Dumbledore, but you can’t deny that he’s got style”. The way he communicated that was terrific.
Cathay’s new screens at AMK Hubs were a little disappointing though. The quality of the video and audio didn’t match those that were offered at The Cathay. Maybe I’m biased, maybe it’s the movie, I don’t know. But it wasn’t the quality that I expected.
Oh well. I’ll end it here.
I deleted this entire post because it was getting too messy. A proper LE post will come. Meanwhile, go make a pledge to save the Earth – I made one, or just watch LE on MSN or on TV.
MSN’s better since it’s live, uncut and uncensored.
If you’re wondering what the title means, it’s SOS in Morse code.
In short, dit dit dit dah dah dah dit dit dit. It should sound familiar.
Out.
I think Oliver and I freaked out the receptionist at DP Architects.
“Good afternoon. We have an appointment with Mr Francis Lee at 3 o’ clock”
“Huh?! Mr Fraaancis Lee ah?” *She emphasized his whole name*
“Yes – we made an appointment with his secretary Ms Karen”
I wish I had a camera to capture her reaction when we said the opening line. Her mouth was agape, and that wasn’t very professional. Haha, it’s probably akin to going to the front desk of News Corp in New York and saying that you got a meeting with Rupert Murdoch.
Something to that effect la. Anyway, we thought we were late since we got lost looking for the office, but in the end, we still had to wait another quarter of an hour for the secretary to appear with his photos for the 155 project.
That quarter of an hour was rather interesting watching all the projects that the company did, like Vivo City and all, but what was more intriguing was the slight hint was office politics that we heard. It didn’t sound very friendly at all. Sitting there was similar to being an exhibit in the zoo too – everyone who walked past stared at us as if we were aliens from outer space. It was nice observing how they did business and introduced one another though. Oh, and there was this guy who could absolutely star in the Gatsby commercial. His hair is…BIG. He’s probably an architect or a designer, judging by the gargantuan portfolio he was carrying.
On the train home, I made another observation. I shan’t mention the names of the schools here since I’ll be accused of over-generalization. Granted, it’s a very minute sample size, but when you’re wearing your school uniform, your actions are amplified and magnified several times. Cliché as it sounds, but you represent your school, remember?
Sit on the floor of the train when you’re wearing a pinafore? Hmmm, to use a nonce word from our generation, it’s so un-glam. To use a proper word, it’s ugly. Those girls from the Madrasahs were the most disciplined of the lot. I’m not trying to stain the reputation of any school here – I have seen a boy from my school sit on the floor of the train when it was almost rush hour. His shirt screamed “Josephian” at the back. Ouch.
Alright, I’ll end here. Some things aren’t meant to be elaborated on.
Hurray! GST 7%!
It seems only a while ago that it was 3%, then 4%, then 5%, and now, 7%. It’ll definitely be 10% soon. Mark my words.
The GST is causing an erosion of my finances.
Sigh.
Donation, anyone?
The Grand Old Lady’s farewell got marred by Singapore’s defeat by Australia. Well, nice try, but it’ll be hard for us to succeed given our small physical sizes. That match was a good example – a Singapore player running straight into an Aussie would bounce backwards and fall, but the Aussie wouldn’t move a single inch.
Thus, the moment the game turns physical, we’re totally lost.
That aside, I ponned the Literature Symposium today. In fact, I think only 2 out of my class of 28 bothered to go. The rest of us didn’t give a damn, and besides, we’ll still get the notes. Mr Johnson was trying to convince us to go by using reasons that you’ll typically hear from a boys’ school but the school next door has never appealed to most of us.
I ponned it for another humanity. We had to go finish the (dumb) Geog project which required us to visit a farm and interview the people there. The Prelims are knocking on the door, and we still have to do projects! What the ___!
Bollywood Veggies was in some mega super duper ulu part of Singapore that some how told me that if you want to dump a body, dump it there.
Alright, enough text. Let the pictures talk. Oh, before you say I post too many, I shot 129 in under one hour. Heh.
Self-explanatory.
We went down this path.
We found a lot of funky plants, but this one prompted us to discuss about the banana tree spirit. Does anyone want to try poking a needle and tying the red string to yourself?
“Bollywood Villa” “Beware of dogs”. The dog inside was humongous and bloody noisy.
Mr Lizard jumped out of nowhere. Maybe he doesn’t know that jumping around makes it more obvious. Anyway, it had something that looked like a large fly in its mouth.
Reverse psychology. It screams touch me please! Which we promptly did.
Some plants had names that were quite a misfit.
There wasn’t any blackcurrants in sight.
Milk fruits didn’t have milk. Maybe it needs an udder or something.
No oysters in the oyster plant.
Mother-in-laws aren’t really loved. Anyway, to those taking their mother tongue orals, have fun!
Gold fingers without any gold or fingers.
Ahh, rice! Agriculture!
He found out that he didn’t like farming.
He loved it though.
His hobby: watering the soil.
Pro at work. When I asked him to pose for a photo, he swung his parang and I thought I was going to die.
It’s a bit weird talking about how hot the the actress in 200 Pounds Beauty is, in a damn farm.
No sunflower.
Dangerous!
Some people just need elevation.
Alright, we all needed some elevation. The dog helped us to take the photo.
Waiting, and waiting.
We were so inspired, we ate fresh later.
Bye!
“Alright boys, pack up your stuff now, we’re going to the mosque.”
“HUH!??!?!??!”
We weren’t told that we had an RME field trip to the mosque today because of some miscommunication between the two teachers. Thus, half the class couldn’t go there. But anyway, the rest of us went to this Harmony Centre at the An-Nahdhah Mosque in Bishan to learn about Islam. Or to put it rather bluntly, to correct the misgivings that we might have about them.
I didn’t have my camera with me, so like everyone else, I used my phone, and the quality might be a little suspect.
A pano shot of the mosque, taken from Zul’s blog.
We were basically going around reading the panels, listening to the guides and frantically scribbling onto the quiz worksheet.
Everyone’s practising their note-taking and comprehension skills.
This was one of the more interesting panels IMO.
The bottom paragraph reads: “The important contributions made by Islamic scholars can be seen in many words still in use today: alkali, algebra, alchemy, alcohol, Aldebaran, Altair, Algol, alembic, algorithim, almanac, Almagest, zenith and zero.”
Cool eh? Al is supposed to mean ‘the’ in Arabic.
Muslim artifacts 101.
The astrolabe. I’ll probably describe it as an ancient GPS. Wikipedia entry here.
I can’t really remember what this is called, but it’s used in more rural areas for the headman to inform his village that it’s prayer time, or to gather them for news, or to warn them of danger. Sharidan and I were reminded of those bells that were used in camps.
Islamic calligraphy on the mosque wall. This is the Kufic script from what I learnt there. I think it’s the nicest. Haha.
Three levels for people to pray. The middle’s reserved for women only.
Yup, so after that we watched a video and had a Q&A session, which I think was good and awful. Good in the sense that we learnt some new facts about Islam, but awful in the sense that they weren’t able to answer some of the tougher questions since they were not religious experts. Questions about Al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah were treated rather carefully, and it didn’t really help clear the air.
The Centre’s open all the time for you guys to visit. It’s quite nice, really.
I hate trying to write when I have absolutely nothing to write about.
Theses and term papers can go to hell.
It makes me damn tempted to copy, but:
Copying may result in serious consequence like
1. Not receiving a testimonial from the school.
2. The entire school being informed that you are lying, cheating, double headed serpent who is not to be trusted under any circumstances.
3. Being barred from Literature lessons.
Hahaha. You probably envisioned that plagiarism will happen if you set a 1500-word thesis paper.
My family and our relatives went to Shashlik Restaurant to celebrate my mum’s birthday. It’s a Russian restaurant and the food is AWESOME. That speaks a lot, since I rarely ever blog about gastronomic delights.
Anyway, I’m feeling a little lazy (you will after an entire morning of intensive practicals), so I shall quote reviews here.
Here’s Miyagi’s review:
I am thankful for a lot of things, really. Like having enough money to give myself a treat after a reasonably crappy day at work. And what treat did I have enough money to give myself, you may well ask?
Well, I went and had dinner at that venerable Russo-Hainanese institution that serves the best borsch bar none: Shashlik Restaurant. If you’ve been there, you’d know the food’s real good, and you’d immediately forgive the late 70s lighting, the late 70s furnishing, the late 70s crockery and the late 70s waiters.
I’ve heard before about how rude and brusque the waiters at Shashlik were, and I’d like to clarify one thing: the waiters aren’t rude, they’re just Hainanese. They’ll stand around the bar and talk loudly in Russian because they think they’re the best Russian restaurant in town, and they’d be right.
And one of the fabulous things about the brusque borsch serving waiters is that even when there’s a bunch of them talking loudly in Russian at the bar, there’s still a couple of them brusquely pushing borsch, shashlik, and all manner of flambé on squeaky trolleys around the restaurant.
If you were to go there, on the 6th floor of the Far East Shopping Centre (not Far East Plaza, which is the cool and funky place with the funky clothes and the funky people selling funky clothes to funky people), I’d recommend you have the borsch to start with, then the shashlik beef/lamb, and then the flambéed banana/cherry/alaska for dessert, topped off with the best Hainanese Russian kopitiam coffee this side of Ya Kun’s.
I really think this is the best Russian restaurant in town, and I’m not saying this because I’m afraid the Hainanese waiters might flambée my backside if I said otherwise. Dinner was good enough for me to want to dine there again soon, which is significant in itself because before tonight, the last time I dined there must’ve been twenty years ago.
Haha, they didn’t treat us badly at all because we spoke them to Hainanese. I’m considered rather abnormal for my fluency in the dialect, but oh well, it does come in handy some times.
Baked Alaska is a definite must-try, but don’t go there on Tuesdays and Wednesdays since the Chef that makes it won’t be around. Baked Alaska is ice cream set on fire.
Piakster said this:
Shashlik is also one of the few rare places in Singapore that still does the dying trade of table-side service which involves pushing a guriedon next to your table and serving the food from there. It’s with this guriedon service that you can actually expect flambe items such as your steaks, cherries jubliee and baked alaska.
It’s freaking cool seeing the alcohol erupting in flames! As with Miyagi, I recommend exactly the same stuff – Borsch, then Shaslik Beef/Pork/Lamb/Chicken with Russian Salad, and a super nice dessert of your choice to top it all off. They have the Russian foie gras called Tournedous Rossini, but goose liver really isn’t my type of food.
The lighting was romantically dark, so forgive me for the awful quality of the pictures.
The menu.
If you drive, don’t touch the one on the left.
The lighting’s like this.
The panels have accolades or newspaper articles as this shows.
Reservations are a must.
SHASHLIK RESTAURANT
545, Orchard Road, #06-19, Far East Shopping Centre, Singapore 238882
Ph : 6732 6401, 6734 3090 ; Fax : 6734 3090
Revenge is a funny thing.
Daniel Ocean and his company of felons seem to have a rather unique view of revenge.
To them, revenge is an expensive thing.
(They were watching Terry Bendict on the Oprah Winfrey Show – they donated $72 million of his money to a charity, and he was trying to talk about how he could see the children’s eyes and everything.)
The presence of Al Pacino in a suit reminded me of The Godfather, and I thought perhaps revenge would be done the Mafia way – a few bullets to the head so that the offender sleeps with the fishes. Well, maybe Pacino would have done that since his character said something about throwing Reuben off the roof. Daniel Ocean and his gang had a much cooler and stylo mylo way of revenge. Diamonds and half a billion stolen! It’s enough to make any macho man cry.
But then again, their method of exacting revenge is bloody troublesome and expensive. No wonder you don’t really see such heists being reported in the papers. Sharp suits and effortless style, woah! How much money do you need? Even with a richer than rich backer like Terry Benedict, thirty-six million to buy the machine that dug the Chunnel from France is a bit impractical.
Besides that, everything else about Ocean’s Thirteen is worth that seven bucks. The banter, gadgets, plot, storyline, bla bla makes it a superb movie. It also helped that the cinema was filled with office workers and not irritating teens that chatter non-stop throughout.
Must watch! I’ll definitely buy the DVD when it comes out.
Oh, and Gramophone at The Cathay seems to have an opening sale now. While my cousins were captivated by the 200 pounds beauty, I was distracted by the CDs and DVDs selling at dirt cheap prices. Those DVDs and CDs aren’t the China-made parallel imports – they’re the real deal. Lifehouse released a new album, titled Who We Are, and going by the reviews on Amazon, it either sucks or is damn good.
Here’s a song from the album – Broken.
Hmmm.
Today’s papers had interesting articles on Abdul Basheer, our home-made DIY radical. One sentence from Andy Soh’s written commentary was particularly resonating:
For instance, it is wrong to believe that a poor, uneducated, bearded male Muslim from a developing country “fits the bill” of terrorism more readily than… …
My encounter on the train a few days ago clearly showed that most of us, including myself have this warped idea that all terrorists fit a certain physical appearance. On the way to Dhoby Ghaut in the thick of the evening rush hour, I was standing opposite this youth. Like everyone, I was suddenly aware of his presence.
Skin colour? Check.
Goatee? Check.
Black duffel bag? Check.
Handphone? Check.
He didn’t help his own case much too – he was reading the Quran, the Muslim Holy Book. While the rest of the ageing train was packed like sardines, the area that I was standing in with him had plenty of breathing space. The many office workers eyed him with apprehension, and I guess they would probably start running the moment his hand strayed towards his pocket, where a cable trailed towards.
A further, keener observation told me that he was not a religious militant. His bag was wide open and I took the opportunity to run my eyes over the contents in it. There was nothing that looked remotely like an explosive.
Is the media at fault for our mindset towards that group of people? Why do we always think that terrorists are probably bearded Muslims?Yes, Abu Bashir and Osama all had formidable goatees, but the others like Dujana and Noordin have nothing but perhaps just a moustache.
Why can’t the others from other religions and races be extremists too?
They certainly can, as the female guard at Yio Chu Kang station showed yesterday. For the first time since the move was initiated, I was asked to open my bag for a ‘random bag check’. I obliged of course, and mainly because you can’t decline. Maybe she had nothing better to do since the station was rather empty at 11am. Or maybe she was hoping that instead of the thick hardcover foolscap book and calculator inside, she would find a slab of C4 and a timer attached to it.
Me, the terrorist? I admit that you won’t find me waving the national flag ardently with patriotic fervor, but I am certainly not the type to blow myself or others up.
Except online, lah.
